


the firewatcher's daughter

by ofhobbitsandwomen (litvirg)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bellarke, F/M, Magic AU, Wellven
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-16 17:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7278064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litvirg/pseuds/ofhobbitsandwomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“New research has surfaced regarding the movement to wean citizens off of the dangerous, addictive practices, popularly known as sorcery.” The broadcast crackled in the distance, the station cutting in and out. “–developed particularly for at risk youths. Parents are asked to brief at risk children on the dangers and then send them to the treatment facilities, where they will be cared for until they are deemed healthy and safe enough to return home.”</i><br/> </p><p>Magic has been outlawed. Raven's been recruit for an underground sorcerer's rebellion. Bellamy's hiding in plain sight. And Wells just wants to find Clarke again.</p><p> </p><p>  <strong>[[Abandoned]]</strong></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from Brandi Carlile's "The Stranger At My Door"

**C L A R K E**

The room was cold around her. It was always cold around her. The air in it feeling too small, too compressed, pushing into her if she moved. 

So she stayed still. 

Sitting perched on the hard mattress, one sheet tucked in on three sides around it, waiting for her to slip in underneath at the end of every day as the bright white of the walls faded into the grey and then the black of the night, given off by a lamp with a dimmer someone else controlled so that maybe, one day, she’d forget there were no windows in the room. 

She let her feet lay flat on the cold, grey floor. White and grey. White and grey. That was all she saw. 

Until, of course, the moments it wasn’t. 

The moments she would glance over at the small, cubed TV, one scrounged up from some basement somewhere, too old and out of date, too useless to use on anyone worth anything. Sat in front of the only other piece of furniture in the room, a small metal chair, Clarke felt a jolt run through her veins any time she so much as glanced over at the old TV. 

She’d hear footsteps pound from the end of the hallway, knew exactly how many it took to get to her room. As soon as she heard the sliding door at the end of the hallway she knew. Forty seven steps until she heard the lock on her door click. Then six and half steps from the door to her bed where they would pull her up, yanking her up by the bicep, knowing she’d go limp instead of fight back. Three steps from the bed to the chair. 

They’d ask her name. She’d answer without looking them in the eye. 

She didn’t at first. Small and stupid, she thought that her name was something they couldn’t take away from her. Something that would mean something when she got out. But she knew now. They could take anything from her. She’d never get out. 

“Clarke Griffin.” 

Then they’d ask her age. That was the hard one. She used to keep a tally of days on her wall. There’d been a small pink barrette in her hair the day they’d taken her in , and she used it, every day, every week, every month for a year. Scratch a day, go to sleep. Scratch a day, go to sleep. Over and Over again. For three hundred and sixty five days. 

Then the barrette broke and it didn’t seem worth the scrapes on her hand. 

So once a year, when she didn’t realize what day it was, she’d get a birthday present in the form of a shock lash when she gave the wrong number. 

“Age,” a pale, gawky man repeated and she bit back a smile. This was a new one. Overeager. Trying to make her mad so he could use the fancy new baton they gave him. 

“Nineteen.”

A beat. Nothing.  _ Happy Unbirthday _ , she thought. 

It was sparking though, in her hands when she said that. Red sparks flying out of her fingertips, her palms warming as she clenched her fists in her hand. 

“Play the tape.”

Ah, home movies. Her favorite part of the day. 

They thought it was the video, the footage of the others like her that sparked it. Stupid. She’d thought they would have figured out by now that it was just what it did. It sat there, a layer under her skin waiting and boiling, then sparking as soon as it wanted. Anytime her pulse beat half a beat above normal she’d feel it. 

Spark, spark, spark. 

There was the sound of static, a black and white screen and then yelling. Always the same. People crowded holding signs barely visible above billowing smoke, choking the people holding them. Screams. She felt the smoke in her throat. She felt the screams clawing their way up their throats and out of hers. 

The smoke wasn’t just in the TV anymore. It was spilling out of it, gagging them all with the smell of burning plastic. 

She felt a shock in her side and the smoke sparked into a flash, cracking the light bulb above her. The only light in the room was the grey light coming through the smoke in front of the television screen. 

“What do you see.”

The same thing she saw everyday. The same thing she’d see the next day. 

“A riot,” she croaked. 

“What’s happening here, Clarke?”

She squeezed her eyes shut as the shadows on the screen threw their hands up, pushing back people who were yards in front of them, smacking a row of them down in one quick motion. She plugged her ears when she knew she’d hear the purr of gunfire spray out at the ones who knocked them down. 

Another shock in her side. 

“What’s happening here, Clarke?”

“A riot,” she repeated. It wasn’t the answer she wanted. “They’re using it. They’re being killed for it.”

It was bubbling over inside of her. 

“For what.”

Everyday. Everyday they went through the same questions. Everyday they thought if she said the word, if she spat it out while she watched them shot down and beaten with batons for it, if she watched them beaten down for using it while it sparked inside her, if she said it’s name--then it would stop. It would all go away just like--

“Magic.”

***

She waited in the chair after they left. They took the clock out of her room a month after she’d gotten there. There was someone on the other side of the wall--there used to be someone on the other side of the wall who’d count the ticks. 

Then they’d made their own fireworks at midnight a month after she got there and the clock was ripped from the wall. 

So she had no idea how much time passed until the light on the dimmer switch got darker and darker. 

It clicked a shade lower when she heard the sliding door at the end of the hall. Forty seven steps. The click of the lock. Eight steps from the door to the chair. They brought a different tape that time. One of them even smirked at her when they popped it in. 

She felt the ripple of heat wash through her chest and arms again.

Then she saw what was on the tape. 

A tall, fair skinned, slender woman with a long brown braid. A tall man beside her. A wall of magic users surrounding them, a protective wall around them. Until a shock ran through the crowd, a cloud of smoke coming up behind them, knocking them to the ground. 

She felt a hot tear run down her face. She didn’t want to say the names out loud but she knew they would make her. Because the couple stood with them. They stood with people like her. Before they knew anything about her. 

The screen cracked as another tear dripped down her face. 

There was a ringing in her ears so loud that she couldn’t hear them when they asked. She watched their lips move, knew exactly what she had to say, but there was a wall between them, blocking the sound. She couldn’t even hear her own voice when she answered. But the names slipped from between her lips. 

“Abigail and Jake Griffin.”

***

They moved her to a different room. Not a bed, a mattress on the floor. The TV still, off to the side. Newer than the other one, but nothing she could imagine they would use anymore. It still had knobs on the front for switching the channel. 

They took the chair away, just a big open room. 

There was a new jumpsuit laid out for her on the bed and she looked down at the one she was wearing, startled to see how singed it was from her outburst in the other room. 

She heard the tick of a clock on the other side of the wall and wondered what new form of treatment they’d come up with the next day. 

—

**R A V E N**

Raven held in a snort as the man who’d been heading straight for her--with his pint of beer sloshing back on his already stained, seafoam green polo--stopped short, confused when he suddenly found himself staring at an empty booth. 

She’d been flicking in and out of his sight for a few minutes, laughing when he couldn’t see her, every time he’d twirl his body back over to her to tilt his glass up or giver her a wink, just to find an empty booth. Then she’d wait for someone to walk in front of her, and she’d be there again, waving at him, throwing him a wink. 

He’d been about two steps away from her when she’d winked, dropping a veil over his line of vision, stopping him in his tracks as he was once again staring at an empty booth. 

Finally, glancing down at his beer, he shoved it onto the bar and gave his own cheek a solid smack before wandering out the doors at the front, leaving her to lean back and actually enjoy her drink. In peace. 

She slumped back in her booth, leaning out of the low light of the lamp hanging above the middle of the table, letting her eyes drifting over to a table in the front corner. Two men sat there, dressed casually in black and grey tshirts and jeans, but they were jumpy. Heads snapping over to the door every time it opened, watching where the waiters went, waving the servers away every time they walked over to their table. 

Raven watched them wave the poor girl away again, her pad slipping back into her apron before she veered away from their table and started making her way toward Raven. Raven leaned back and stilled the air around her, making the booth look unoccupied to the girl and the men at the high table. No one else around her seemed to notice her tricks, heads leaned into one another as they drank their own drinks and ate their nachos and did what people do--ignored everyone around them. 

The men kept their eyes on the waitress as she meandered her way over to Raven’s booth--the empty booth, and took her glass, three quarters of the way empty, and wiped down the table with the rag stuck next to her order pad, tucked inside the apron. 

Their eyes lingered for a moment, but they turned back around, and her form flickered back into the booth once the waitress cleared the table. 

Shame, Raven thought. She’d really wanted to finish that drink. 

She was relieved though for a moment, to have a second to herself there, in the dark corner of the pub. She lifted her left leg up on the cushion beside her, and bent over, nearly in half, stretching it out. She felt a long sigh, nearly a groan slip out of her as she felt the tight muscles stretch with her movement. She worked her fingers into her thigh, pushing and squeezing and poking, attempting at some sort of massage, and she wondered if she’d be able to make a secretary at a spa see a handful of napkins as some cash. Enough to get her a massage from someone who actually knew what they were doing. 

The man in the table next to her stood up, watching her with curious eyes and she felt herself prickle at the attention. 

“Here,” she said to him, bending over to pick up a dirty napkin from the floor. “You dropped this.”

His eyes widened and he smiled and she choked on a laugh, a cough spitting roughly from her lips. 

“Thanks, doll,” he said with a wink, and pocketed what looked to him like a fifty dollar bill. She folded her hands and rested her chin on the tops of her knuckles smiling so sweetly at him she felt the sugar rot her teeth. 

“No problem.” He leaned in but her teeth were suddenly yellow and there were bugs flying around her, landing on her cheeks and nose. He pulled back. “You have a nice day now.”

*** 

Four drinks later and the men were still there, jumping at shadows, watching the bartender. 

They’d shifted a bit and Raven had had to switch booths, blending further into the corner than before, but with a slightly worse view of the men. It had been an accident, finding them, wandering into the pub and seeing the seal on their briefcases. But she was there now and she wasn’t leaving until they were. 

She’d come in earlier for a beer and a rest. Her legs were scraped and aching and she stunk. She wished smell was part of her repertoire of skills, but she sat there in her stink leaning away from anyone who walked by so they wouldn’t catch a whiff. 

It had been too long, far too long, since she’d found somewhere to shower. Normally she could sneak into a gym or a rec center every few days, wash off the dirt and the grime, but she’d been--preoccupied. And then, earlier, when the folks she was tailing for six days straight finally caught on, she’d dipped down an alley, thinking she could outrun them, but found herself hopping into a dumpster for cover as their footsteps got louder and louder behind her. 

The old metal had scraped her skin and she’d landed on something hard, like broken wood, and a bag split underneath her when she landed. 

It was the kind of afternoon that really called for a drink. 

But apparently the universe wasn’t kind enough to her to give her a real break. 

It was the bartender she couldn’t figure out. The men, she knew. She’d seen them before, recognized the seal on the bag, learned to run--fast--whenever she saw it. To slash the tires of any van that had it painted on it’s doors if she came across one. 

But the bartender was new. He was twitchy, she noticed. Jumping anytime someone shoved an empty glass in front of him. Like he wasn’t quite used to the job. 

And he kept glancing over at the two men, looking away quickly, eyes darting around the rest of the pub as soon as he locked eyes with one of them, but always starting with the two men in the corner. 

She pulled her glass to her lips and downed the last bit of her drink, pulling her body out of the booth despite her muscle’s screams of protest. Ignoring the grunts from the people perched on stools around the bar, she shoved her way up to it, stopping right in front of the bartender, slapping her empty down in front of him. 

“Help a girl out, would you?” She flashed him a smile and a wink as he looked over at her. He softened a bit at that and she managed to stop her eyes rolling back in her head, just before she made him see a giant spider crawl its way out of the glass right as his hands wrapped around it. 

“Mother _ fucker _ ,” he yelped, snapping his hand back, away from it, knocking it to the side with a crash. 

“Whoops,” Raven said. “Silly me.”

She’d barely gotten the words out before his hand latched around hers and his eyes darted to the men in the corner again, one quick nod, before she felt their hands wrap around her from behind. 

They dragged her outside, her body limp between their arms as she surveyed the alley around her. One van. Two trash cans. Five men.

The odds weren’t great, she admitted. But. Not the worst she’d ever dealt with. 

Her eyes squeezed shut as she focused, trying to remember the instinctual stuff, the things that were supposed to be easy as breathing, that they--her people at least--were all born with. Somehow it was easier for her to make a dark alley look like the stage at an opera, than to push the air out around her. But she didn’t think that would help much. 

It didn’t work the first time. Or the second. But after a moment of concentrated breathing--in and out and in and out, focused, intentional--she got it. Three of the men fell back, smacking into the walls behind them before slumping down on the ground, and she was able to swing the trash cans on either side of the three of them, watching as their eyes slipped closed, their breathing slow and steady. Unconscious. 

The crash of the tin cans up against one another was enough to startle the other two, one who still had his fingers wrapped around her, the other who was a few feet in front of her. The man holding her loosened his grip as he looked over at his friend, sliding down the brick wall. It was enough of an opening for her to snap her head back, ignoring the  _ crack _ that came when her head collided with his nose. 

He stepped back, letting go of her, and she shot her leg out, knocking the wind out of him as he fell to the ground. 

The man in front of her was red, stepping toward her slowly. 

One, she thought. She could handle one. She could handle one in her  _ sleep _ . 

“You’re alone,” she told him. He stopped short, blinking a few times, head whipping back and forth as he stared dumbly at the spot her saw her standing just a moment ago. “You parked your car a block away.”

She watched as his hand slid into his pocket, pulling out his car keys, running his thumb over them with wide, wondering eyes. 

“This is an empty street,” she told him. The men weren’t on the wall. The van was gone. She wasn’t standing in front of him anymore. All there was, all he could see, was a dashed yellow line in the middle of the pavement he stood on, a red stop sign a yard in front of him. 

“You parked your car a block away,” she repeated. He shook his head. She pushed it further into his head.  _ A block away, a block away, your car’s a block away _ . It was sinking in, folding into his thoughts, blending and not a moment after it, he wrapped his fist around his car keys, giving the empty scene around him one more look before taking off around the corner. 

“Alright,” she said to herself. “That wasn’t so bad.”

She walked over to the van, yanking the back door open. She held her breath hoping to be surprised at what she found inside, thinking maybe just this once she’d find something else. Boxes of money. Barrels of guns. 

Instead three pairs of small wide eyes looked back up at her. 

She held her hand out to them. 

“You’re alright,” she told them, pulling them out one by one and wiping the dirt off their clothes. “Or, you will be soon.”

They stepped away from the van, not taking their eyes off her, but they said nothing. She bent down, getting on her knees as she pulled a pen and a piece of paper out of her pocket, scribbling an address down on it before handing it over to them. 

“I’d take you there myself, but you’d stick out more if you were seen walking with me,” she said, pressing it into the palm of the oldest looking kid in front of her. “It’s only a few blocks away. Okay? It’ll be safe for you there.”

The tall one nodded, pulling the paper into her chest, clutching it tight. 

“Walk behind the building, cut through back alleys. Don’t walk out in the open okay?” None of them nodded and her heart lurched a bit. “You have to tell me you understand. I’ve got too much to do, I can’t worry about having to break you out of another one of these vans.”

The littlest one smiled at her, nodding slightly, red hair bouncing up and down with the movement. Raven held her hand out in front of her and the girl slapped her palm against it softly, smiling at the high five.

“Good.” She stood up. “Okay. I’ll stay here for a bit and make sure they don’t wake up until you’re out of sight.”

They still looked too scared to say anything, but all three nodded, walking backwards away from her slowly until they were at the corner, and they turned and bolted away from the alley. 

She listened until she couldn’t hear their footsteps anymore and let herself slump against the wall, squeezing her eyes shut. A pressure built behind her eyes and she kept them shut tight until the tears slipped out, one by one, burning her skin as they trailed down her cheeks. 

_ One minute _ , she told herself.  _ You get one minute _ . 

***

She grabbed a drink of a server’s tray as she walked back through the beer, replacing it with an empty she’d snatched from a table by the door. 

She shot it back, wincing at the bitter taste and burn. She dropped the empty glass on the bar, and pushed her way back through to the front. 

It seemed colder when she walked through the front doors of the pub, the wind digging into her cheeks. She pulled her jacket tighter around her. 

“That was impressive Reyes.”

She jumped. When she turned she saw a familiar face. Anya. Long, sandy blonde hair pulled tight around her thin, pointed face. The woman’s arms were crossed, the gold triangle on her sleeve facing Raven intentionally as she leaned back against the lamp post behind her. 

Raven opened her mouth to say something, but Anya beat her to it.

“Let’s talk.” 

Raven watched as Anya raised her hand, sweeping it to the side, and then everything went black. 

 

—

**W E L L S**

_ “New research has surfaced regarding the movement to wean citizens off of the dangerous, addictive practices, popularly known as sorcery.” _

Wells sat up, his head tipping out of the bed of the truck, leaning out to hear the cracking broadcast better. He snorted at it. Practices. Right. The voice was smooth flat, like the man was half asleep reading the script in front of him. The thought sparked a dark heat low in Wells’ belly. 

_ “--developed particularly for at risk youths. Parents are asked to brief at risk children on the dangers and then send them to the treatment facilities, where they will be cared for until they are deemed healthy and safe enough to return home.” _

Wells bristled at that. 

He wondered where all the research about the number of “at risk youths” not returning home from the treatment facilities was. He ached at the thought of it. 

The thought of watching her, watching Clarke, waving to him from the back of the car, like she was going on vacation. He felt the cramp work its way back into his hand from every letter he wrote for a year with no response. With the bruise he got on his knuckles when he punched the small wooden box in his dad’s office, each letter sitting neatly inside, one on top of the other, sealed, stamped, but never sent. 

His feet ached from jumping down out of his window, bag slung over his shoulder, running softly down his driveway, around the corner, never looking back. 

The broadcast was still crackling in his ear, and he listened halfheartedly as he rummaged through his bag, pulling out a granola bar. It was squashed flat, the little chocolate chips, melting against the soft pads of his fingers as he unwrapped it. He licked the chocolate off his fingers as the words buzzed in his ear. It was the same thing it always was, he wasn’t sure why he bothered. 

_ Magic is dangerous. It’s a threat to order. Lasting effects of the magic friendly legislation cause daily problems for law enforcement. Youths at risk.  _

And yet he sat there, waiting, hoping to hear something new. 

He ate the last bit of the granola bar, crumpled the wrapper up and shoved it back into his bag, pulling out the pages and pages of maps and notes stuffed in the pocket, crinkling, scratching against his skin as he dug through. Most were old, too old for him to hang on to. Taking up space in his bag, useless and outdated, but he clung on to them. Refused to throw them away. 

It was a record, a log. How many days he camped out in the beds of random trucks, listening to car radios in parking lots, sitting in a dark corner in the back of a bar, listening to the news report. 

Marking places down, keeping track, narrowing down where she could have gone. Where she could have been taken. 

Every map was another few months of searching. And every few months of searching was another few months that she was gone, held captive somewhere. Alone. Being  _ weaned _ off her magic, being tortured, probably. So when he got a new one, grabbed it off a stand and ran without paying, he’d fold the other one down, crumpled as small as he could get it, and shove it to the bottom of his bag. 

There wasn’t much else in his bag. Food when he could get it. A spare set of clothes he washed every few days when he had to change. Sometimes a few bills. A water bottle. And some letters. 

Old letters, the pages yellowing after being kept in a box for years, hidden from him. 

He read them so often he nearly knew them all by heart. 

_ I think it started _ , the third one said.  _ I think I felt it just like you did, before you left. It’s warm. And big. Does it feel big for you? Like your hands can’t quite fit it? It’s buzzing, but it’s not loud. I can’t hear the buzzing, I just feel it, everyday. It’s strongest when I wake up. Is that what it was like for you, Clarke? _

_ How do I make it stop? _

The same things repeated over and over again in every letter.

_ It’s not right, figuring it out without you here.  _

_ I hope you’re figuring yours out okay.  _

_ Maybe there’s a school we can go to, some place we can practice together.  _

_ Why haven’t you answered any of my letters? _

The corners of the pages were worn down, his thumbs gripping them hard every night as his eyes glazed over the words, blurry, messy shapes instead of sentences. 

He remembered throwing the box across the room, hearing the wood crack against the wall before grabbing the letters and shoving them in a bag. Slamming the window shut behind him. Wishing it had cracked like the box. 

*** 

He heard whispers of it. The Underground. 

Everywhere he went. Everywhere they talked about magic, everywhere they talked about the weaning programs, it would sit in the corner of the conversation, a lurking shadow, a threatening idea, too dangerous to say outloud. 

They were supposed to be like him. Older and trained and organized. But like him. 

The flash of the gold triangle tattoo on a passing forearm made him pause. He could follow him. He could follow him straight to the underground, the gold triangle lighting the way for him. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d thought of it--a warm bed, a solid roof. A group of people just like him surrounding him outside every wall. Someone to train him. To help him figure it all out since he left home before he could try. 

If he found them first--The Underground--they could help him. They could teach him and train him and give him back up. They might even be able to take him to Clarke. 

It was the same argument rolling around his head, stopping him from pulling out one of his useless maps, making his feet itch--wondering if he should just do it. Just follow them. Just figure it out. 

But he had waited too long and the arm with the tattoo was gone. 

He sighed and told himself the same spiel he always did. 

The Underground was for life. You didn’t just pop in, and they didn’t just give you favors. Getting in to get Clarke meant getting Clarke in. And he didn’t think she was ready to join up with any organization. Not without a choice. 

He felt his chest tighten, his eyes looking for the tattoo one more time without his permission, but it was gone. 

He pulled a letter out. 

_ I miss you, Clarke.  _

_ I can’t figure it out. It slips out sometimes. Like a burst of flame, or a sharp cool breeze running through the room.  _

_ I need your help. I can’t control it.  _

It was different now. The flame only came when he wanted it to. The ice sealing over windows as he walked past only when he put it there. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t what he was supposed to be able to do. 

_ You’re gonna help me right? When you come back? _

The paper was so worn it felt like pilled fabric in his hands as he crushed it in his fist. 

_ When are you coming back? _

Screw the Underground. He’d find them later. If he needed them. He was going after his friend. 

—

**R A V E N**

She huffed as they pointed to a med table, a thin piece of paper spread over it in the name of sanitation, as if it would help in the dark, dusty bunker they took her to. 

“I’m fine,” she grit out.  

“You just blacked out,” Anya said, flat. “You might have a concussion.”

Raven rolled her eyes at that. She pushed aside the paper, the crinkling noise it made feeling too much like a prickling in her ears, but pulled herself up onto the table anyway. 

“You and I both know I don’t have a concussion,” Raven muttered. “You’d never be so sloppy with your knockouts.” 

A medic came over to her, a small flashlight in his hand. She watched his arm reach up, tilting her chin and holding her eye open as he flashed the light at her pupil. 

She focused her gaze on his arm, centered right at her nose. 

It was pale, green veins showing through the skin. His skin was covered in tattoos. Mostly geometric shapes, animals made out of different heaps of triangles. Gold triangles sprinkled in with the rest. 

She glanced over to the back of the guard standing behind Anya. Gold triangle tattoo on her neck, just below her hairline, prominent and showing with her hair shaved close to her head. 

Anya had one too. On her collarbone. 

Branded fucking cattle, she thought. 

“We can help each other, Raven,” Anya said. 

Raven shook her head, biting her lip to keep from laughing. She really, really doubted it. 

“You don’t help people,” Raven said. “You recruit them. And I’ve told you, I’m not interested. Take the gold stamp somewhere else.”

Anya narrowed her eyes at her, studying her closely. She waited until the medic in front of Raven finished up, giving her a small nod before Anya waved him out, telling him she’d meet him outside. 

“You’re impressive, Raven,” she continued once they were alone. She wondered how many times Anya had practiced this speech. Maybe it was tailored just for her. Maybe she’d given it five times already that day, a different recruits name substituted in each time. “You do what we do. But you do it on your own.”

“No,” Raven said. “I don’t. I don’t do what you do.”

“You fight back, don’t you?” 

Raven shrugged. Anya was going to believe what she wanted to believe no matter what Raven told her. She was going to think that she was right. She was going to think she was charitable. Helping Raven, reaching out to the poor orphan girl, patching her up, patting her on the back. Telling her she could be  _ one of them _ . 

Like it was as simple as that. 

“We need people like you,” Anya said. It was a new tactic she hadn’t tried yet. Raven's curiosity got the better of her and she looked back up, an eyebrow arched, but meeting Anya’s cold, determined stare. “People who aren’t afraid to do what has to be done. Who can get in and out, quick and dirty, without worrying about protocol, as long as they’re providing a service to people like us.”

It drew her up short a bit, the new approach. The Underground never seemed particularly concerned with helping people, not the people Raven helped. The poor kids, the orphans, the trouble makers. The ones with reputations so bad no one would care if they went missing. They’d be on a poster, on the news for half a day, if that. 

Secretly people would breathe a sigh of relief, happy they didn’t have to worry about the little delinquents running around anymore. 

It had never been a focus of the Underground. 

“That’s what you do Raven,” Anya continued. “And you’re good at it. But you’re reckless.” 

She stared down pointedly at Raven’s wrapped leg, the yellow rag holding tight to the wound underneath, the deep scrape from a fall she didn’t even remember. 

“You get caught and have to punch your way out all the time,” Anya said flatly. Raven scoffed, knowing it wasn’t the violence that Anya disapproved of. It was the audacity she had to not be a professional, to not know enough about covering her tracks, working quick enough with just her own hands to not get pinned into a corner every now and again. 

“You get injured and have to run away like a dog with your tail between your legs.”

That, really, was just untrue. 

“When have I ever run away with my tail between my legs?” Raven said. 

Anya nodded, allowing her just that one thing. 

“You can’t go to a hospital,” she said. “You can’t see a real doctor. You find dirty rags to wrap yourself with, washing your wounds at public bathrooms. How long until that stops working? You’ve got no family--they could lock you up and no one would ever know.” 

She paused a moment, clearly waiting for Raven to pounce, to bite back, but she didn’t. She sat still, feeling a wave of cool ice form all around her--ready to snap and crack away with at the wrong words. 

It was true, all of it. Everything that Anya was saying. 

But. If she was being honest. That was also part of the fun of it all. 

Once she’d pushed it down far enough to the back of her mind--the thought that no one would ever come for her if she was in trouble, that no one would ever know. That she was alone. That nobody cared. Once she’d pushed it out of the way, blocked herself from giving it more than a second or two's thought everyday--that was part of the thrill. 

She could be anyone she wanted. No one knew her. No one cared. She was a ghost, slipping through people stuck on the ground, flying from place to place, just because she could. 

It wasn’t exactly the sort of freedom she’d imagined as a little girl. But it was freedom of a sort, no denying that. 

She could see it in the eyes of the kids she pulled out of basements and attics and vans. The way they looked at her, scared and desperate and caged. Some just wanted to run. Some thought she was just going to take them somewhere new to lock them up. 

But some looked at her like she was exactly where they wanted to be. On the other side of the door, breaking whatever rules, whatever laws, whatever _ things _ they wanted to, answering to no one. Getting sweaty and bruised by pushing back and refusing to be taken in. Deciding for themselves what they got to do. 

Punishing the law, challenging it, just by existing. 

“We’re not looking to change what you do, Raven.” Anya’s voice was tight, Practiced words falling down around them. “You can have backup with the Underground. Someone to bail you out when you get into trouble. A team of your own.”

She looked Raven up and down. 

“You can get a bed to sleep in every night and a hot meal every day.”

Raven tried to remember the last time she slept in an honest to goodness bed. Ate something that didn’t come in a wrapper she’d stolen from a convenience store. 

“And a change of clothes,” Anya said, stepping away from her. “You reek.” 

*** 

**B E L L A M Y**

The kid in front of him was smirking. 

He knew the type. Some rich kid, his fancy pressed clothes one size too big for him, a jacked rolled up to his elbows with his hundred dollar button up shirt rolled around it. A backwards hat slouching over his ears so he could still pretend like he looked like some sort of new money anarchist. Out with his friends, wandering into the old circus on a dare, pants pockets bulging with gold and platinum credit cards, and just a few bills, no more than two hundred, incase whatever scrape they got themselves into needed a more immediate solution than calling daddy to bail them out. 

He was sure the kid didn’t believe in magic. He was banking on it, in fact. It never worked with people who believed him. 

This kids wandered into his tent knowing that whatever was about to happen was crap. Shady magic venues were trendy for rich kids like this one. Out in abandoned corners of crappy deserted neighborhoods. They got to feel badass, leaving their silver spoons at home, slumming it with illegal sorcerers. 

Shit like that was always popular with kids like this--pampered rich boys who would never get in trouble with the law, even if they broke it. 

And then they got to go back home and boast about it, how they stood in the same three feet as some grimy, magician. They’d gather their friends around a table and talk about how they didn’t believe any of it, how it was no wonder the magic users were defeated so easily if they were all cracks like that one. 

And then their friends would line up outside his tent, pockets full of money, just wanting to see the fake old coot for themselves. 

The kid was laughing as he looked around the tent, purple rags hanging down, beads strung sloppily across them, A table with candles and cards and sparkling stones was off to the side, just in front of the flap that led to the back of the tent, the living portion of it. 

“What’s back there?” the kid asked, nodding to the back. 

Bellamy made a show of raising his eyebrows, turning to look back at the space behind him. Then he twisted back around, his lip pulled between his teeth, practiced and coy, for a few moments before he pointedly breezed past the question. 

“What sort of fortune would you like done today?”

His voice was smooth, a honeyed drawl dripping between his lips. 

“What, you don’t just like, look at me and read my fortune?” 

“If a fortune is  _ read _ , it must be read  _ from  _ something. No one can read the air.” 

He could see the kid rolling his eyes. 

“Tea leaves, I think,” Bellamy said before the kid in front of him got a chance to answer. “That’s what I feel in your aura today.”

When he’d first started, he’d had lots of things, piles of books and more curtains, thick tall candles, anything that stood high, so he could duck behind it, biting his lip and hiding his own smile when he said things like that. He did a lot of turning and walking around before he’d learned not to laugh at it all. 

The teapot was old, ceramic with throned flowers painted on it. Something he’d stolen from a garage sale a few years back, something he figured would help with the eclectic look of the tent. He poured it out into the cups, the purple tea nearly sparkling in the low light of the tent. 

The kid made no motion to drink from the cup, so, with a sigh, Bellamy grabbed his own, lifting it in the air in a salute to him, and drained it in a sip. 

“I’m not drinking that,” the kid said. 

Bellamy bit his tongue. He felt the vein in his forehead pound as he clenched his teeth and tried not to roll his eyes. He pictured dumping the tea all over his freshly pressed shirt. 

“It is not in your future to die by my hand,” he said instead. “Perhaps if you drink the tea I can tell you exactly what is in your future.” 

There was a sprinkle of doubt in the air and he reached out and grabbed it. It grew within him, so large, until he couldn’t hold it anymore and he pushed it forward, into the boy across from him. 

The kid shoved the tea forward. 

“I’m not drinking that tea, man.”

“What sort of fortune would you like today?” he asked. He made his voice sound farther away. Airy. “The stones? The cards? The fog?”

He took the boy’s tea and drank it himself, lips quirking up as he stared into the leaves at the bottom. Just for show. 

The reluctant belief that dripped into the boy was enough. He pushed on it, pressing into it so hard that it broke through the wall of doubt he’d built a minute before. Just one crack in the stones. 

It was the routine. Always the same routine. Bring them in surrounded by the low lighting, the velvet rugs, the burning candles, the makeup across his face. Make them feel like it’s new and bizarre, like even the air has a different smell in the tent than it does outside. Like it’s heavier, thicker. 

Cling onto the curiosity and the stubborn refusal to believe in him. Play with the two feelings, make them dance around each other. 

Then the doubt. Always early on. Pressing it into them, making them want to get up and leave, like they couldn’t take the hoax any longer. 

Until they weren’t quite sure it was a hoax anymore. 

When they left it was always the same skepticism and disbelief clouding their head. It was just a coincidence that his reading was so spot on. They couldn’t believe in magic--he wouldn’t let the belief stretch that far--but they could believe in coincidences. 

The boy considered for a moment, sliding back into the chair he’d begun to stand up from. 

“The cards,” he said eventually.

Bellamy nodded, bowing deeply as he dug around the drawer by his right leg, feeling for the cards. 

“Excellent choice, sir.”

***

There was a slow sound of clapping behind him just as the boy slipped out of his tent. 

“Nice show,” he heard and he whipped around looking for the face to go with the voice. 

A girl was standing there, one who looked around his age. She had t dark hair pulled up into a ponytail, ratty clothes, and a bandage wrapped around her thigh. 

His hand automatically reached for the knife kept always at his hip. 

“Don’t worry.” She waved her hand at his movement. “We’re on the same team here.”

He relaxed, just a bit. Not enough to let go of the blade, but enough to sink into the chair he was at before, nodding toward the other one for her to sit in. 

“Though,” she said, sitting down, gripping the arms of the chair to lower herself slowly. He wondered how fresh the wound on her leg was. “For the record, I don’t believe in this branch of magic at all.”

“You know,” he said. His voice was low and gravely, back to normal, drawl cast aside until another client came walking in. “I  _ knew  _ you were going to say that.” 

She rolled her eyes, but he could see her biting down a smile. It was enough to loosen the grip he had on the knife. 

“I’m Raven,” she said. She paused waiting for his answer. 

“Bellamy,” he returned. “But something tells me you already knew that.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said. “Mostly in the last few hours. But the Underground has been keeping its eye on you for years.”

That was news. 

He sat up a little straighter, wondering what an agent for the Underground was possibly doing in his tent. 

“It’s impressive, what you’re doing,” she admitted. “Using magic to hide magic.” 

Bellamy shrugged at that. 

“Fortune telling has been around for centuries. The one thing that’s stayed consistent with it, is people’s belief that it’s a hoax,” he said. “Or their insistence that it’s a hoax. I just cash in on the doubt.”

“So it’s real then?” she asked. “Your fortunes?”

“No,” Bellamy laughed. “No, I don’t even know how to read the tea leaves. The tarot cards I’ve got, but the leaves are still a bit of a mystery.” 

“Do you believe in them?” 

“I believe in making people doubt it’s real magic,” he said slowly. “While convincing them enough to hand over their own money.” 

“You’re one of the few magics who has managed to make something like this work,” she said. “Or so the Underground tells me. Even making money off the deception.”

It was flattering, if completely irrelevant to his life. He wasn’t doing it to impress the Underground. He didn’t care if his name was being mentioned, tossed around with the sorcerers around him. He didn’t do it for that. It was living, surviving. A means to an end. 

And he wasn’t quite sure he liked the idea of the Underground sending one of their agents to him, just to chat. He wasn’t sure he liked any alternative either. 

“The Underground wants you,” Raven said, cutting right to it. “And once they decide they want you, you’re pretty much in. Skip the next year of dodging them and tell them your terms now.” 

Her eyes were serious, and she’d dropped the sauve, peppy voice she’d been using earlier. It wasn’t small talk, it wasn’t coy, it was just a fact. Like she was speaking from experience. Almost like a warning. 

He looked around his tent. It was shabby by design, keeping up the charade for the rich kids who wanted to try something other than whatever they found in their mansions or top floor lofts. But it was home. It was all he knew. The back portion, behind the curtain wasn’t so bad. Clean and decorated, his books and pictures scattered all around. 

But it certainly wasn’t luxury. And this was never supposed to be for long anyway. 

Raven followed his eye to the back room. 

“Everyone’s got something they want,” she said. “Make them give you whatever it is.”

*** 

**W E L L S**

He felt bad about it every time. Stealing food. 

He never too much, just enough to get him through, shoving granola bars and bags of nuts into his pack, watching the shop workers guiltily each time. 

But he had to eat. And he didn’t have any money. 

He zipped his bag up and ducked out of the side door, running a bit until he was a couple blocks away, even though he knew the worker didn’t see him. The security footage might be another story, but that didn’t matter. 

It was getting dark and his feet were cold and aching. He hadn’t found a decent place to sleep in days, but he was worn too thin, harrowed to the bone and knew he couldn’t go another night without a few hours solid rest. 

There was a block of buildings a few neighborhoods back that he could probably find somewhere to sleep. They were old, abandoned and run down. It was sad to look at them, the cracking stones, strips of paint gone missing, the wood with holes from mites. 

It had been one of the best neighborhoods a few decades back, before the evacs and weaning projects. Back before magic itself was criminalized. 

It was blocks of shops and health centers, apartment building. Run by magic users, rented by magic users. There were still signs hanging in some of the windows, advertising the medicines they had, the products they could get, the services the sorcerers offered. 

Now there were holes in the windows of the apartment buildings, where rocks went sailing through in the raids before the official evacuations. 

It was a place to sleep though, a place with either a bed or a couch that wouldn’t take any breaking into because all the doors had been jimmied open already, by kids like him who’d gotten there before him. 

There were a lot like him. Running to the underground. Keeping quiet, under the radar. Just looking for a place to sleep on their way to somewhere else, somewhere better. 

He’d heard of safe houses, hidden communities where kids could go, places to take refuge from it all. Most of them were going there, nothing but rumors and hope to guide their way. Sometimes they offered to take him with them. Trade some food for security, they always said. Better in numbers. 

Usually he ignored them. 

There was no use getting involved with a group of kids when he knew they’d be going in different directions in only a matter of time. Clarke was his priority. 

Maybe after they could join up with someone else. Find a safe house, stop running, stop stealing. 

But for now, he avoided looking at them when he ran into them, knowing that skipping the conversation was just easier. 

There were two of them on the corner ahead of him. 

It was easy to spot the type. Outdated clothes. Covered in dirt, unwashed hair. Always carrying a backpack. Practical but worn shoes. 

It was like looking in a mirror. 

This time it was a girl and a boy, both tall with dark, tanned skin. Messy dark hair, pulled up into a ponytail on the girl and falling in loose waves over the boy’s forehead. 

He pulled up short when he saw something dangling from the boy’s backpack. Gleaming against the light of the street lamp, clacking as it bounced back and forth onto the front of his bag with each step. 

He felt his hands shake beside him, his face suddenly red and hot. Everything turned to black clouds as his eyes narrowed in on it, his feet moving, pounding against the pavement before he realized he was running toward him. His hands reached out, fists wrapping around the fabric of the man’s shirt when he pushed him to the ground. 

“What the fuck?” he heard the girl yell but it was like he was under water, her voice dull through the bubble around his ears. He felt her step toward him and he thrust his hand out, a wall stopping her from getting any closer. The guy stood up from the ground, his eyes wide and startled. He reached his arms out in front of him but Wells waved his hand, pinning the boy’s arms to his sides. 

“Just calm down, alright?” the girl said to him. “We don’t know what the hell your problem is.”

His throat felt like it was closing up, but he shoved the words out, hands clenched in tight fits against his legs. 

“The watch,” he said, pointing to the man’s backpack. “Where did you get it?”

“A client,” he said. “Didn’t have any money. Used it as payment.”

“It’s not yours!” Wells shouted. 

“Obviously,” he said. He was calm, shockingly calm for someone who’s arms were pinned to his side. His eyes were darting around him, not nervously though. The stupidity of what he just did came crashing around Wells. He hadn’t even check to see if there were people around. 

“It was my friend’s,” he said quietly. “She wouldn’t have given it up.”

The boys hands twitched and he realized Wells had given up his hold. He shrugged out of his backpack, snapping the watch off the string on the front and tossed it to Wells. 

“It wasn’t a girl who gave it to me,” he said. 

Wells nodded, latching the watch onto his wrist. 

“Sorry,” he said. “She--”

The boy shook his head. 

“Trust me,” he said. His eyes were dark and serious. “You don’t have to explain.”

He looked behind him, back at the girl. She was staring at him with wide eyes, her jaw dipping down a little. She shook herself out of it when he met her eye, though, straightening herself up. He felt too big for his body then, like he was taking up too much space, and part of him wished he hadn’t run over, that he hadn’t made a scene. 

He was about to open his mouth to apologize to her when she made a decision. 

“Come on,” she said. “You’re coming with us.”

***

Their names were Bellamy and Raven, and that was just about all they told him as they walked. 

It wasn’t until they were walking down the stairs, into an old abandoned basement, down an old, grey tunnel that branched off of it, that he knew where they were going. A faded triangle was painted to the cement wall and he looked back and forth between the two of them, looking for some clue that he missed, when he asked. 

“Are we--” he started. 

“Yes,” Raven said, sounding bored. “Keep up.” 

There was one more door to push through at the end, and the difference in their surroundings was shocking. Between the drab, dripping walls of the cement and the wallpapered walls of the hallway beyond, framed pictures hanging up, clear, unflickering lighting, Wells wasn’t sure that he wasn’t dreaming it all up. 

It felt rough to the touch, when he dragged his hands along the sides, like stone that had been painted over. 

He opened his mouth to ask, probably something along the lines of  _ what the hell _ , but Raven shot a glare at him and he snapped it shut. 

She stopped short and knocked on a door off to his right, gesturing them in when a curt “Come in” came from behind the door. 

A tall bony woman stood leaning up against a desk. 

“Anya, I bring you Bellamy, boy of wonders,” she said. 

But Anya’s eyes weren’t looking at Raven, or Bellamy. They were trained on him. 

“Who’s this,” she said, nodding to him. Raven paused a moment. “We sent you out to get Blake, Reyes. Not to start a collection of rogue sorcerers.”

Wells almost cut in to say he had no intention of being a part of anyone’s collection. That he didn’t even want to be there. 

“Look,  I’m going to get my own team eventually, right?” Raven asked. “ You want me here I want a team. And I’m gonna pick them. And I want him. ”

Wells’ mouth dried up and he felt the room spinning around him. A lot. A lot of things were happening very quickly. Clarke’s watch felt heavy on his wrist. 

“Fine,” Anya said. She sighed, her hands dropping down to her sides. “Fine.”

She turned back around, sitting down at her desk, clearly dismissing them. The three of them were shuffled out of the room before he’d figured out what the hell they’d all just agreed to. 

*** 

A knock sounded on his door. 

Wells sat up from his bed, wondering when the last time he’d had a bed, or a room of his own. A door even, much less someone to come knocking on it. 

It only sort of felt like a cell. 

A flicker of a memory whispered in his ear, about a time when he’d had a room, a wall covered in movie posters and pictures, clothes thrown about his room, his father’s footsteps in the hallway outside his door. It felt strange, the memory. Like a pair of shoes that were a size too big. Just the style he wanted but not quite right. 

He opened the door to see Raven on the other side. 

“We’ve been summoned,” she said flatly. “Anya apparently has come to terms with our team and wants to talk to us all again.”

It was good Anya had come to terms with it, he thought. Somebody should. 

She nodded her head toward the hallway, waiting for him. He pulled his door shut behind him as he fell into step next to her, watching her carefully out of the corner of his eye. 

“Why’d you bring me here?” he asked her. “Why didn’t you just kick my ass?” He heard her laugh at that and felt a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “I mean, you probably could have. We both know you thought about it.” 

She watched him, her eyes raking up and down his form. His skin blushed under her stare. 

She shrugged instead of answering, walking a few steps ahead of him. 

He walked behind her, taking it all in. It wasn’t so different from the place he grew up. Big and grand, and pretentiously decorated. A far cry from what he imagined the Underground to be. 

There were men, standing on every corner. They stared straight ahead, not making eye contact, their hands tucked behind their backs. 

“Why are there guards on every corner?” he said quietly. “Waste of manpower if they’re so desperate for recruits.”

“They aren’t guards,” Raven called over her shoulder. “They’re architects, like me.”

He recognized Anya’s door when they got to it. Dark wood, with a big gold door knob. 

Raven’s hand was pushing against his chest, stopping him as he reached to open the door. 

“That instinctual magic you’ve got? No one has it honed like that. Not without training. I want the best on my team,” she said, answering his question from earlier. She shot him a wry smile. “Even if it is some crazy homeless guy who attacked me.”

*** 

Wells glanced at his watch. Clarke’s watch. There was a scratch down the face, thin and long, stretching from the eleven to the six. 

Anya had been talking for the better part of an hour. The three of them were shoved onto a small couch she had in the side of her office, as she leaned back against the desk and told them--very thoroughly--exactly what they had walked into here. 

“The Underground isn’t just rogue sorcerers anymore,” she said. “We don’t go off on our own. We don’t have riots. It’s about more than just saving our own skin. In exchange for your service you get a bed and a room and food. Medical care when you need it.”

She paused, staring at them. 

“You get a team that has your back. A purpose,” she carried on. “But you can’t take stupid risks. You’re going to have to work with--work for the Underground. Take orders. Go on missions.”

“Why wait?”

The room stopped around him and he felt three pairs of eyes latch onto him. Anya’s eyes widened, challenging him to go on. 

It might get him kicked out. She seemed the type to toss him out for interrupting her, if he was being honest with himself. But he hadn’t come here on his own. It wasn’t his choice to walk through those doors. And he had a job to do. So he wasn’t backing down. 

He felt Raven’s fingers dig into his elbow. 

“The Underground does rescue missions, right?” he asked.

“We looked into you,” she said in response. She pursed her lips. “A Jaha. Ran away when you were fourteen. Could have been more use to us if you’d stuck around, got some intel, but it’s too late for that now.” 

She leaned forward. 

“And what is it you want, Wells Jaha?”

He leveled his stare against hers. 

“I want to rescue Clarke Griffin.”

Anya ducked her head, her chin resting against her chest. He could see a small smile work its way into the corner of her mouth before she bit it away. Her tongue traced along her upper lip before she glanced back up at him. 

She sighed. “Of course you do.”

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**C L A R K E**

It was the same everyday, more or less. Different faces sometimes. Not that it mattered. They looked at her far more than she looked at them. 

The tapes were the same every day though. It was almost funny, she thought. That they still used tapes. Decades had gone by since anyone had even seen a VCR, and yet here they were. Like they were freezing time, pushing her backwards to confuse her more. Just like when they took the clock out.

No matter. 

She sat cross legged on her bed. She could still hear the tick of the clock on the other side of the wall and she wondered if they’d forgotten to take it down now that she was in a new room, or if it was left there on purpose. Her new clothes were still clean, grey and flat against her skin. 

She could feel the magic sparking under her palms. Not so hard, not so hot as usual. Just tickling her skin, making her rub her palms fast against the tops of her thighs, scratching them against the fabric as if that would dull the sensation or make it go away. 

It tickled more when she did that, a shiver running from the tips of her fingers up to the tops of her shoulders, then shooting all the way down to her toes. Almost a good feeling, a small smile twitching involuntarily at the corner of her mouth. A memory flashed in the back of her mind, a time when the same feeling had her bubbling over with laughter on her bed. 

A hand, a dark warm hand, small, still chubby, clasped over her shoulder when it happened. Laughing with her. It had picked up her own hand, the soft fingers dancing over her palm as it was lifted closer to a pair of dark brown eyes where a boy inspected it. 

_ “What did it feel like?”  _

The whisper was fresh in her ear, like a mouth had just leaned down only a moment ago to speak softly at her side. 

_ “I don’t know.” _ It was her own voice. Excited. Unfamiliar.  _ “Like when you brush your hand against the top of a flower, and it tickles your skin.”  _

The tickling wasn’t so soft now. A shade colder than the little girl she’d  been could have been talking about. Sharper. But not painful. 

She let herself enjoy it, leaning back into the mattress and pretending it was another bed in another place, where another body could sit beside her and she wouldn’t be worried. Where he’d ask her questions about it as if it was something exciting, something marvelous, not something to hide or push aside. 

Sometimes she wished she could be rid of it, like they all seemed to want. She watched videos of people rallying, people protesting, people fighting for the right to have it and live, to have it and thrive, but she’d never met any of them. None except her parents. And they were gone, far, far away from her. And she was shut away in the room with the only other people she’d ever known, wanting her to strip out the magic from her veins bit by bit. 

She wished she could. So it wouldn’t boil up inside of her, or scrape at the inside of her stomach when she couldn’t control it. So it wouldn’t burn and freeze her from the inside out. So the tickling wouldn’t grow to a scratching, unbearable to contain within herself. So it wouldn’t spark, or explode out of her when they were around. 

Maybe if it just went away it would all be better. 

But she couldn’t get rid of it. So she buried it as deep as she could, hoping it would fold into itself and shrink so small that she could ignore it without any trouble. 

She heard footsteps outside her door and she jolted upright on the mattress. Only one set, not two. She watched as the knob turned, slowly, carefully, so as not to make any noise, and then there was a boot stepping lightly into her room. 

He wasn’t supposed to be there, whoever he was. And she wasn’t sure if it was good or bad that he was there. All she knew was that the itching stopped, turning to waves under her skin as her hands lifted up and he fell back, across the room into the wall.

His hands went up.

He was out of breath and his eyes were darting around the room, quickly, frantically, before they landed back on her. She could barely see them, dark and brown, beneath the limp curly brown hair that fell onto his forehead. 

He definitely wasn’t from here, she decided, looking at his clothes. They were too ragged and dirty to be one of the ones who lived there. His skin, tanned and dark with freckles splashed all over it, was flushed, and she wondered exactly what he’s done to get there. And what he was doing there. 

She held her hands up in a warning when he pushed himself up off of the wall and made to step toward her. 

It was the first time she’d used it, really used it, since before she could remember. Since before she came to whatever room they’d put her in first. Maybe the men who showed her the tapes were on to something, scaring her out of using it. Now that she had she could feel it growing, coming out of the corner she’d hidden it within. 

And she wanted to use it again. That was the strongest thing she felt in that moment. That now that she’d used it, she could do it again. And it would feel even better. 

His voice came out as a whisper. 

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m here to help.”

It was like a blanket wrapped around her head, clouding her thoughts. Pushing and twisting and kneading at them until they’d transformed into something new. Like a baker’s hands pressing into dough, working it until it looked completely different than when it started. 

Gone were the thoughts that flowed through her only a moment ago. She searched through what was left in her head, looking up at his wide, nervous eyes, and found that she trusted him. 

***

_ Two weeks earlier _

**B E L L A M Y**

He’d laughed when Raven told him there was a gym he could use. 

“Don’t want to let yourself go, or anything,” had been her exact words. Hardly known him at all and she was already talking shit about him. It was comforting, though. Everyone else was quiet and serious, like even their afternoon meal was part of some sort of important, secret mission. Like a crack of a smile would risk something they couldn’t give away. 

‘We’ve got leaks in the roof,” Bellamy grumbled in response. “But we’ve got a gym. Okay.”

He’d gone anyway. Better than sitting in his room. Better than waiting for someone to knock on his door and tell him Anya wanted to see them again. Better than sitting around in the mess hall, counting the minutes like dollars he could be making back in his tent. 

There were only a few people there when he walked in. Most lumped in the corner he walked by on the way to the punching bags. As he stepped past them, one nearly clipped his shoulder as they were propelled forward. A small girl standing in the corner lowered her hand, a flick of the wrist having sent the man careening past Bellamy. 

The free weights sat untouched along the side of the wall. There was what looked like a pile of yoga mats along the back. 

They didn’t care about the equipment, any of them. It wasn’t the focus of their training. Instead they pushed each other around with a wave of their hand, lifted each other up with a twitch of their eyes. 

“Wanna work in?” one asked as he passed them by. 

Bellamy shook his head. “Not my kind of magic.”

It was instinct training. Getting your movements in tune with your power so they were inextricably linked, one not able to exist without the other. It’s what Wells was so good at. Not that he did it all the time, he had more control over it. 

Bellamy’s was different. Maybe if he practiced he could have what Wells had, but it wasn’t his focus. He couldn’t practice his in a gym. Not that he wanted to. 

He wrapped his hands, standing in front of the heavy bag. 

It felt good, letting loose on the bag. He let his thoughts wash away as he landed blow after blow. He still wasn’t sure what he was doing there. Maybe it would be better to leave, to go back to his tent, back to swindling rich kids out of their money. 

But maybe the Underground could help him. He needed information, and he was never going to get it sitting behind that velvet table. 

So he ignored the rest of the people in the gym, the ones lifting things up with the raise of an eyebrow, holding off flying objects with a single raised finger, and turned back to the bag, breathing in before feeling it all rush from his stomach through to his knuckles as they crashed against the bag. 

A throat cleared behind him. 

He turned, wiping his brow with his forearm. Wells. 

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the gym but he hadn’t realized how sweaty he’d gotten, how laboured his breathing had become. He pointed at the water bottle sitting on the stool off to Wells’ right and Wells tossed it to him. Well, he jerked his head from the stool in Bellamy’s direction and the water bottle went flying, straight into Bellamy’s hand. 

“I’m not here to work on that sort of crap,” Bellamy said. “Find a different partner if that’s what you’re here for.”

“It’s not,” Wells said shrugging. “Anya wants us.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes and went back to punching the bag. 

Just a few days there and they were all apparently Anya’s messenger pigeons. Doing whatever she told them to. It was unsettling, and it got under his skin every time he remembered that’s who he was supposed to be now. Someone who follows orders. Takes commands. Has their decisions made by someone else. 

For years he was fine, operating on his own. And now?

Now he had to sit around in his room or the mess hall or the gym and wait for someone to come get him and tell him what to do. 

“We’re supposed to start training, I guess,” Wells continued. “To get Clarke back.”

“So that’s the Underground’s top priority now?” Bellamy turned back to him. “Getting back your childhood friend?”

It was all he’d heard about since he got there. From Wells. From Raven. From random people in passing, introducing themselves with a steady hand and an inspecting eye. It didn’t make sense. Wells wasn’t even supposed to be there. And untested, unheard of guy who’d run away from home when he was practically no more than a kid, who’d never focused his magic enough to figure out what he could do beyond his instincts. 

Technically Bellamy wasn’t even supposed to be there. 

Raven had told him later that first day that she was supposed to bring him to a different location. Let Anya get a feel for him in person before showing him where headquarters were. You were supposed to pledge before you got to headquarters. 

But there they were. 

“We’re not exactly the Underground’s top team,” Wells pointed out. 

It was true. More like the bottom of the heap, all things considered. Most teams lived in adjoining rooms. Ate together. Trained together. Wells and Raven and Bellamy were scattered and uncommunicative. They didn’t bother trying to find each other during the day and when they did run into each other it would be a passing  _ ‘how’s it going’  _ and a nod before they carried on doing whatever they were doing. 

It was a big risk for the Underground, letting a team like that wear their logo. 

Maybe it did make sense that their first mission was a personal one for Wells after all. 

“You realize it’s a test, then?” Bellamy asked Wells. 

It took a moment, but he nodded, keeping his eyes locked on Bellamy’s. 

Bellamy started unwrapping his hands. He watched as Wells’ eyes darted around the gym watching people practice what he seemed to be able to do without a second thought. He waited until Wells looked back at him before he spoke again. 

“We’re not friends,” he said flatly. “I came here for a reason. And I don’t have to tell you what it is. But just know that getting your friend out of--wherever she is, in some stupid, dangerous mission was not a part of that plan.”

Wells nodded about to interrupt him, but Bellamy locked eyes with him. 

“And if it goes wrong, if it screws things up for me, you and I are going to have problems.”

*** 

**R A V E N**

She glanced around Anya’s office. 

There was a door on the far wall to the left of her desk and Raven wondered if that was where Anya slept. She seemed like the kind of person who’d need to live in practically the same place that she worked. 

She was going to ask to pass the time, but was pulled from her thoughts by Anya speaking to them, her and Wells, softly. 

“Wait,” Raven said, a hand flying up. “Where’s the psychic?”

She watched as Anya gnawed on the inside of her cheek, lips pursed as she decided exactly what to tell them. Wells seemed curious too, though he didn’t say anything. When she’d been told to go to Anya for team briefing on the rescue mission, she figured it would be the whole team. 

“I’m meeting with him later,” Anya finally said. “He has a...trickier role to play in the mission. Especially for someone who’s as untested as he is.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Raven could feel Anya’s annoyance at her. She saw it in the tiny flare of her nostrils, they way she paused before she spoke to her, the way she raised her eyebrows everytime Raven opened her mouth to say something. And, fine. She could be annoyed. She could glare and huff and pout all she wanted, because Raven was there. After years of blowing them off, she was there. Anya got what she wanted. 

Just not in the way she wanted. 

The Underground loved the reputation they had. Highly trained, highly skilled sorcerers working as some sort of unified vigilante justice system, taking one for the little guys. They had a reputation of taking in refugee sorcerers, of being a safe haven for those at risk because of their powers, but that’s all it was. Rumors. 

Anya knew it, Raven knew it, they all knew it. That’s why Raven had never sent any of those kids to the Underground. Why she had a map of safe houses tucked away in her pocket, a system rotating where she sent them and when, making sure they never crossed Anya’s path. 

The Underground liked to test them, to train them first. They were  more discerning about who they took in than their reputation made them sound. 

Maybe it was necessary, as Anya had told her once, for the preservation of the Underground. And maybe the preservation of the Underground was necessary for the preservation of sorcerers. 

It just wasn’t Raven’s style. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Anya brushed her off. “What matters is the part of the plan that you need to know.”

“I think I’m going to need to know the whole thing, actually,” Raven said. “No more flying off the cuff right? If we don’t know the whole plan--”

“I didn’t say you weren’t going to know the whole plan,” Anya cut her off. “This is your team. Bellamy’s a part of  _ your _ team. You wanted a team and you got it. I’m telling you your part and you can be a team and figure the rest out together.”

Raven rolled her eyes, ready to tell Anya that she shouldn’t have expected easy obedience from her after it took so long to even get her to step foot in headquarters, but Anya snapped at her again. 

“This isn’t a game,” she said. “You’re not on your own anymore. You’re going to learn to take orders or you’re going to go back out on the street without us there to patch you up when you need it.”

She had half a mind to do just that. To say  _ alright _ , and bounce out of the door, never looking back. But she felt a hand grip her elbow and she glanced over at Wells. 

His eyes were wide and pleading and she felt a sudden pang of compassion for him. Like he could have been on the other side of the door on one of her rescues, and now instead of him, it was his friend. 

So she stayed. 

A silence washed over the room for a moment before Anya continued. 

“Clarke’s in the basement of the Wallace mansion,” she said. 

The Wallace family had been anti-magic since before Raven was born. Big name, old money. They’d rallied against the original legislation, back when magic was slowly integrated into government and health care, and they’d continued rallying until the riots got to be too much and the country succumbed to the pressure. Outlaws again. 

It wasn’t enough for them though, they were out for total segregation--they wanted magic users rounded up and kept in isolation until they were extinct. 

She couldn’t imagine being locked up with them for years. It wasn’t anything she’d dealt with before. 

Raven could feel Wells’ hand grow cold against her elbow before it slowly dropped down to his side. 

“The mansion is, obviously, well-guarded. Guns on nearly every corner of the premises. But,” Anya said, as if she was about to deliver some good news. “Since the Wallace’s are so anti-magic, none of the gunmen are sorcerers.”

“Is that supposed to lighten the mood?”

“That makes your job a hell of a lot easier than it would have been if they  _ were _ sorcerers,” Anya said. “They’re easier to take down. Which is where the two of you come in.”

She paused before carrying on, turning away from Raven and giving her full attention to Wells. 

“We’ve got a route that can get you to exactly where you need to be. It’s tricky and you’re going to have to memorize it, but we can get you there. Once you’re in though, it’s up to you.”

Wells nodded. 

“You’re, essentially, the force,” she told him. “You’re instinctual magic is unlike any we’ve seen in an untrained agent before. It runs deep, you barely need any practice. You screwed yourself over never working on it to figure out what your speciality is, but it is what it is at this point. You’re there to knock out the guards.”

He nodded again. 

“I can’t take them all out, though,” he said. “If there’s as many as you say…”

Anya nodded, turning back to Raven.

There was an odd sort of smile on her face and Raven felt, in the pit of her stomach, that she wasn’t going to like whatever came next. She knew it, and Anya knew it, and she was pretty sure Anya liked that she knew it. 

“That’s where Raven comes in.”

Raven clenched her jaw, waiting. 

“You’re going to make it look the same,” Anya explained. “Every hallway, every corner. Every guard at every turn is going to see the same thing. An empty corridor.”

Raven nearly laughed. 

“You’re going to get into their heads and make them see the same thing, avoiding Wells and Bellamy so they can carry out their parts.”

She felt something burning its way up her throat. Bile or laughter, or maybe just her magic, on instinct trying to launch itself out of her body because there was  _ no way _ . 

“That’s impossible,” she finally sputtered out. “I can’t do it.”

“It’s your job to do it.”

“Do you see how many men we have on the hallways here to make this crap hole look like decent headquarters? One person can’t control that many. I’ve never done more than two at a time. I can’t do it.”

She shook her head. Anya stayed standing, arms crossed in front of her. This couldn’t actually be the plan. It was a set up. An obvious trap for them to fall in. They were going to fail, and it was going to be her fault.

She turned and stormed out of the room. 

***

**W E L L S**

He watched as Raven turned and bolted out of the room. 

Anya was standing in front of him, smirking, and he felt his blood course cooly through his veins. The room had been spinning before, turning slowly around him and he’d wondered if it was some sort of trick like the paintings on the walls or the patterns in the wallpaper. But he knew it wasn’t anyone else twisting the ground beneath his feet. It was just him, losing his grip on the stable air around him as Anya told them exactly where Clarke was. 

They were going to get her back. That’s what he was there for. They had to. 

With a last look at Anya, he nodded curtly and chased Raven out of the room. 

“Hey!” he called after her, but she was nearly around the corner and she didn’t so much as flinch at the sound of his voice. 

He jogged a bit, catching up to her just outside her room. Her back was to him, her shoulder shoved high up against her neck to block him even further away from him, but he reached out and rested his hand on her wrist before she could get her door open and slam it in his face. 

“Raven,” he said. He hadn’t noticed before but she was shaking. Only slightly, not so much that he’d have been able to see it if he hadn’t felt her vibrate against the palm of his hand, but enough. 

“Hey,” he said again. She was shaking her head at him. “I never actually thanked you.”

Her head whipped around to face him. There was a crinkle at the top of her nose where her eyebrows were pulled together as she stared at him in disbelief. 

“For bringing me here,” he said. “For making this happen.”

“You think I did you a favor?” Raven snapped at him. “You think that the Underground was just waiting to get a ridiculous and dangerous and--well let’s face it-- _ impossible _ request from some nobody who wandered in unannounced?”

Wells let his hand fall from her wrist, but he stayed where he was. 

“Pull your head out of your ass, Jaha,” Raven huffed. “It’s a test and we’re going to fail. Now leave me alone.”

She pulled her door open and stomped into her room, not bothering to pull it closed behind her or to check to see if Wells was still there. He hung back a bit, leaning his shoulder against the wall beside her door, but he didn’t leave. 

He wanted to feel bad. About it all. Dropping them into something so quickly, pissing off Anya, dragging Bellamy in with them, getting Raven some sort of impossible task he didn’t understand. But he couldn’t, not really. Not if it meant Clarke could be safe for the first time in years. He couldn’t bring himself to feel bad about the plan. 

But it was his mission, no avoiding that. Raven might be the head of the team, she might be what brought them all together, but she was pulled into it because of him. 

He gave his knuckles a quick rap against the door frame before he stepped into her room. 

“I can help you,” he said. “I’ll help you train.”

She was sitting on the edge of her mattress, boots untied but still on, elbows resting against her knees. 

“What?” she said. 

“It’s all about focus right?” he carried on. “That’s what people say about specialized magic. That it’s all focus. So I’ll help you find a way to focus.”

He felt something then, like a blanket was worming its way into his head, just behind where his eyes sat. It was warm and wide as it wriggled behind his vision, cutting it off for just a moment. Everything went black. 

And then, suddenly, he was somewhere else. 

Where Raven had been sitting in front of him there was a large wardrobe. Purple walls replaced the dull gray of Raven’s room, and the stone beneath his feet had billowed into a full, shag carpet. There was even a window off to his left, some coastline off in the distance outside it. 

“Focus isn’t the problem.” Her voice was close to him, brushing against his ear though he couldn’t see her anymore. “It’s size.” 

Quicker than a blink of his eyes, it all dropped away. Raven was stepping back away from him. 

He grabbed her hand, pulling her out of the room before she could move too far. 

“Come on,” he said, pressing forward, making sure she was still following him. “Size just takes practice.”

***

**B E L L A M Y**

“Your job,” Anya said slowly. “Is the actual retrieval part of the plan. Raven and Wells will get you where you need to be, but you’ll be the one getting Clarke back.”

Bellamy’s head tipped back, confused. He thought Wells was retrieving Clarke. It was his friend after all. 

“You’ll get into her room, make her feel safe,” she paused, staring at him as the meaning of her words sunk in. His fingers twitched at his side. “Then you’ll meet back up with Wells and Raven and the four of you will return to headquarters.”

“I’m not doing that.”

Anya looked bored of him, but Bellamy didn’t care. 

“You will,” she said flatly. 

“I  _ won’t _ .” His voice was ripping through him, burning his throat. He could feel the heat behind his cheeks and he hoped that she saw it. How close he was to snapping. How one wrong word in this conversation would send him over the edge. 

He wanted that to be what people thought of when they asked him to use his powers like that. On a whim, whenever they wanted, for whatever purpose. 

He wasn’t a weapon. His power wasn’t a weapon. It was...survival. That’s all it ever was. Tricking kids into toeing the line between skepticism and belief so they’d pay his fee so he could eat every night was different than overriding someone’s brain completely. 

Thoughts weren’t his to change.  _ Instincts _ weren’t his to change. He could twist them, make them louder or heavier or brighter if he wanted. But he wasn’t going to change them. Not again. Not anymore. 

“I’m not going to change someone’s survival instincts,” he growled. “I’m not going to make someone feel safe where they normally wouldn’t.”

Anya sighed, rolling her eyes. She started walking away from him, back to the other side of her desk, while her hand wiped across her forehead like they’d been there for hours, when really they’d only been talking for a few minutes. 

“This is about survival, Blake.” She wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She didn’t care if his head got so hot it exploded right there in front of her, he could tell. Just so long as he waited for her to say  _ go _ . “Clarke’s survival. The survival of our kind.”

She stopped, making sure he was looking right in her eyes before she said her next pitch. 

“And if that’s not something you think you can do, you’re not going to find much of a place for yourself here.”

“I could change your mind,” he said. The twitching had moved up from his fingers into his arms. He was buzzing, shaking. He wished he was back, sitting behind his table so he’d at least have something to hold on to. “I could make you think it’s a bad plan. I could make you feel whatever I want you to feel.” 

“You and I both know you’re not going to do that.”

She was right. He wasn’t going to. 

“Once,” he whispered. “I do this  _ once _ . We get her out, and you never ask me to do something like this again.”

***

_ Two weeks later _

**R A V E N**

Her back was pressed into the vinyl cushion in the same booth she sat in on the day Anya finally got her. It was less crowded and the bartender had changed--for the better, she thought, probably. She heard the jingle of the door and Wells’ hand was bumping her arm.

“Try this guy,” he mumbled, leaning his head down toward her ear. She shivered as his breath slid down her neck and shook her head to get rid of the feeling. “How about third stool down?”

Raven straightened up, twisting her smile to the corner of her mouth. 

“Alright,” she said. She mimed pushing sleeves up to her elbows. “Watch and learn, Jaha.” 

She zeroed in on the man on the third stool in, reaching out at the same time to grip on to the man walking through the door. It was easier than ever, hardly taking more than a few seconds. She watched as he caught sight of the stool and pushed his way toward the bar, plopping himself down where he saw an empty stool. 

“What the hell man?” 

The first man pushed the second off his laugh, his drink sloshing forward and spilling on to the floor with the movement.

The second man, the one who hadn’t seen the first sitting there, was stumbling back, dumbfounded. 

“Sorry,” he stuttered. “I--I didn’t see you there.”

Wells was pressed into her side, doubled over in laughter. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it, not the first time he’d seen it either. They’d been coming to the same bar for two weeks, ever since he offered to help her. She’d scoffed at him when he offered. Like he knew more than her about it. 

But she’d gone with him anyway, following him out, down the tunnel they’d come in through, waiting to see what he could possibly say to her. 

And then he hadn’t said anything. He’d just stood in front of her, out in the middle of the street, everything buzzing around him, and just held his arms out and cocked his head. 

_ Try me _ , he was saying. With people walking or riding bikes or driving cars, yelling and breathing and scuffling all around them. 

And she did it.

He wasn’t there, he couldn’t see any of them, not even her. He was far away, on a beach somewhere, a hammock hanging between two trees and swaying with the breeze. 

“See?” He’d smiled at her. “Not so hard.” 

They started going out more, going to the pub or cafes around the town, starting small and working up. She’d make one person at a time see something different. The barista would look like a celebrity and they’d stop in their tracks as they got up to the counter. Or he pub would look like a doctor’s office waiting room and they’d walk back out, holding the door open while they checked the sign outside before slowly walking back in to see everything look normal again. 

Then she’d do more than one person at a time. Some random person walking by and Wells, always Wells too. He’d tell her when it worked and when it didn’t. And if it didn’t he’d buy her another drink and tell her to try again. 

If she was honest, she still didn’t think the plan was going to work. She could hold her concentration for a few minutes, but they hadn’t gotten a chance to try anything longer. She’d crawl into her bed every night and stare at the ceiling counting down the hours until they went on their crazy suicide mission. 

They were all going to get captured and locked up just like Clarke and it was going to be her fault. 

And every time Wells would pat her on the back or grab her hand and congratulate her she’d feel a rock in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t tell him. Not after he’d spent hours every day working with her, helping her out, watching her with wide, happy eyes every time she did it right. 

“I can’t believe you still think that’s funny,” she rolled her eyes at him. “I’ve done it, like, twelve times today.”

“I can’t believe the bartender hasn’t gotten confused, honestly,” Wells said. He leaned away from her, pulling his hand off of hers slowly. She had a sudden thought to grab it back, so she reached for her glass instead. 

Wells took a sip from his own and raised his eyebrows at her.

“So,” he said. He pulled a leg up on the bench, knocking his knee against hers. 

“So,” she said. 

“Why does the waiter keep avoiding this booth?” Wells asked. 

Raven glanced up just in time to see the waiter come near the corner of their table, wrinkle his nose and grab their empties before quickly walking away. 

“When he comes over here he sees a couple making out instead of us,” Raven said shrugging. 

Wells choked on his beer. 

“What?”

Raven just rolled her eyes. “I didn’t want anyone to bother us.”

It was startling. How easy it was with Wells. She’d never had anyone she worked with. Anya would pop up occasionally, slap a bandaid on whatever scrape she’d gotten for herself that day. A quick lecture and then goodbye. An operation of women with safe houses where she’d send the kids to once she got them, but nothing more than that. 

And then Wells justs decided that they were going to work together because to him that was just what made  _ sense _ .  For a guy who’d been on his own so long, he certainly had an unnerving belief in the power of teamwork. 

“I think you’re ready,” Wells said. She tried to find the joke in his eyes, the hesitance, the secret disbelief, but it wasn’t there. All that stared back at her was bare, honest faith. Raven had to look away from it to get the feeling back in her fingers. 

“I’m not,” she said, quietly. She kept her eyes on the edge of the table. A ring of condensation sat a few inches away from where her fingertips rested against the wood. The coaster her glass had been sitting on had grown soggy, the cardboard crumbling with the moisture and sticking to her glass, so she’d stopped using it. 

“C’mon, Raven,” Wells said. He didn’t believe her. 

Maybe she wasn’t optimistic. Maybe she was a one drop in the glass kind of girl, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know when something really was going to go incredibly wrong. 

“Hey,” she said, pulling her eyes back up to his. She watched his smile waver a bit before sticking, even though his eyes didn’t match it. “I’m not trying to be an asshole here. But you have to face the fact that we might not actually be able to do this.”

He opened his mouth to protest, to gesture around the pub and say  _ look at what you’ve been able to do, how could you still not believe we could do this _ , but she cut him off. 

“You’ve helped. A lot.” She sighed. “I can do crowds bigger than I’ve ever been able to do before. But the Wallace mansion is huge. They’ll have security cameras everywhere. That means that I have to build the hallway to look different to every single one of the guards, including the ones sitting in the security room half a mansion away, while making sure the three of us--four once we get Clarke--all see what’s really there.”

“Not getting her out,” Wells said, “is not an option.”

“Who is she?” Raven asked. “Obviously I know who she is, but who is she to you?”

Wells tapped his fingers on the edge of the table, not far from hers. They drummed nervously against the chipped surface of the table as he figured out how to explain it all to her, and she watched as the pads of his fingers pressed, soft and worn, into the old stained wood of the table. 

“Clarke was my best friend,” he said, finally. “Her family and my family were connected back for generations. Old money, and all that.”

It was strange to think of Wells in some sort of mansion. Maybe one like the Wallace mansion, big and guarded with great iron fences surrounding it. She couldn’t picture him in his old purple t-shirt and worn out jeans, sitting in some giant bedroom of some mansion. 

“They told me she moved,” he continued on. She didn’t ask who  _ they _ were. Probably the same  _ they _ that put that same look in the eyes of everyone she met. Sad and confused. Waiting for an answer. “That her parents moved and she went with them.

“She’d gotten her powers before me, and by the time I got mine, she was gone. I wrote her letters, talking about it, asking about it. How to use it, how to train it, but she never wrote back.”

He took a long sip of his drink and rubbed a hand down his face. 

“My dad kept the letters. He never sent them. I found them in a box in his office, hidden away from me.”

There was a small, prickly monster in the bottom, darkest corner of her belly that was jealous. She felt sick to her stomach with the thought--that she was jealous of something that caused him so much pain. That she was jealous he’d had a friend torn away from him and that he’d spent the last few years looking for her. That he’d had someone to write those letters to. 

She tore her gaze away from him, afraid he might be able to see it. It wasn’t fair. To crave an ache that someone else wanted, desperately, to get rid of. 

Her glass was empty so she grabbed at his. 

“So I’ve been looking for her ever since. And now that I know where she is--” He cut himself off and shrugged, like it was nothing. Like it was normal to leave a home, to leave safety, to abandon everything on the hope that you might be able to help someone who needed you. 

She felt her throat close up. It was something she was supposed to understand, something she’d defended for years--the need for freedom. Wells just wanted to give Clarke what the two of them had had, no matter how twisted, for years. 

So she nodded her head and gestured to the door. 

“Alright,” she said. “Guess we better get moving then.”

***

**C L A R K E**

One set of footsteps, not two. 

She watched as the knob turned, slowly, carefully, so as not to make any noise, and then there was a boot stepping lightly into her room. 

He wasn’t supposed to be there, whoever he was. But the itching had stopped, turning to waves under her skin as her hands lifted up and he fell back, across the room into the wall.

His hands went up.

He was out of breath and his eyes were darting around the room, quickly, frantically, before they landed back on her. She could barely see them, dark and brown, beneath the limp curly brown hair that fell onto his forehead. 

He definitely wasn’t from here, she decided, looking at his clothes. They were too ragged and dirty to be one of the ones who lived there. His skin, tanned and dark with freckles splashed all over it, was flushed, and she wondered exactly what he’s done to get there. And what he was doing there. 

But he didn’t look like he wanted to be there. There was something clawing it’s way out, something strangling what he wanted. His jaw was clenched so tight that she wondered how far down he’d ground his teeth. And his eyes. Wide. And pleading. Not like anything she’d seen before. 

She held her hands up in a warning when he pushed himself up off of the wall and made to step toward her. 

It was the first time she’d used it, really used it, since before she could remember. Since before she came to whatever room they’d put her in first. Maybe the men who showed her the tapes were on to something, scaring her out of using it. Now that she had she could feel it growing, coming out of the corner she’d hidden it within. 

And she wanted to use it again. That was the strongest thing she felt in that moment. That now that she’d used it, she could do it again. And it would feel even better. 

His voice came out as a whisper. Strangled and shaking and fragile. 

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m here to help.”

It was like a blanket wrapped around her head, clouding her thoughts. Pushing and twisting and kneading at them until they’d transformed into something new. Like a baker’s hands pressing into dough, working it until it looked completely different than when it started. 

Gone were the thoughts that flowed through her only a moment ago. She searched through what was left in her head, looking up at his wide, nervous eyes, and found that she trusted him. 

His hand reached out and grabbed her arm and she felt herself sway her body toward him, following his movements. 

She felt like she was watching him through a glass wall. Pressed into his side but almost completely separate. They were out in the hallway before she even knew what was happening. 

The calm from the room started to slip when they passed the first line of guards. She felt something tickle her fingertips and she jolted on instinct, trying to shove them in her pockets before the guards saw her, but none of them looked up. 

There was a line of sweat forming on her forehead and at the nape of her neck, but the rest of her body felt cold. Like she’d been sitting in front of a fan too long on a hot summer’s day, the tangy drips of sweat from the sun not completely gone, but a layer of gooseflesh covering her arms. 

She tried to pull away from him, to run back to her room before the guards saw her, but his arm only wrapped more tightly around her. 

“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “They can’t see us.”

That didn’t make any sense. She wondered what he did to them, and what that meant for her if she was going with him. Her magic was scraping its way up, pushing out from her shoulders and down to her fingers and she couldn’t control it. 

“Hey.” The man was pulling her closer to him. “Stop that or none of us are getting out of here alive.”

She tried. She was really trying. To cool it, to stop the spark from singing the fabric inside her pockets, to push it back into the corner she’d made for it deep, deep inside, but it wasn’t going. She looked around frantically, trying to find somewhere to run to, a room to hide in while it sparked off, but she was pinned to his side. She couldn’t feel the comforting wave she’d felt in her room anymore, and all she wanted to do was run. 

Then, without warning, a wall of exhaustion hit her and everything went black. 

***

When she woke up, the sharp face of a woman was staring down at her. 

She felt a pillow under her head and an IV stuck in the side of her arm. Her clothes had been changed, no more singed marks, no more jumpsuit. 

She pushed herself up slowly, taking in the room around her. To her right was the man from her room, the one who’d gotten her out, perched on a table. His dark hair looked freshly washed, a cut on his face freshly cleaned. His arms were crossed over his chest as he watched her take it all in. 

It was his voice that spoke first. 

“Well,” he said. His voice was low and gravelly when he wasn’t whispering. “Welcome to the Underground, princess.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm always a slut for feedback

**Author's Note:**

> this project is a big one so updates may not been super quick, but i'm really excited about this one!


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